


Goodbye Vintage RCA Remote

by mandarou



Series: Dishonor [3]
Category: Captain America (Movies), The Avengers (Marvel) - All Media Types
Genre: ......it might be crack lbr, AlternAvengers, AlternaBuckys, Avengers AU, Gen, I swear to God this is not crack, listen pal, multiverse trope, this is going to make zero sense if you haven't read the other stories come on
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-10-13
Updated: 2017-10-13
Packaged: 2019-01-17 00:52:09
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 6
Words: 2,066
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12354012
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mandarou/pseuds/mandarou
Summary: So, you were visited by another you from another dimension. Walk it off.





	1. It's Vintage

**Author's Note:**

> Just little blips in the multiverse, for anyone who wants to follow up on how the _other_ characters are doing.

“Dammit, Barnes!” Howard raged, tossing bits and pieces of explosives around and riffling through an oversized trunk full of highly flammable material as he puffed on a thin cigar.

“I said I was sorry,” Bucky offered dryly.

Howard damn near stomped his foot. “But you didn’t mean it!”

Bucky glanced at Steve over his shoulder and shrugged. Steve was smiling and trying to hide it with his hand.

“You know how much that coat took to make?” Howard demanded as he stood and rounded on Bucky, waving a piece of parachute silk at him.

Bucky squinted, humming dubiously.

“It is _winter_!” Howard continued, stomping around and flinging silk. “How do you lose your coat? How do you lose your damn near _bulletproof coat_ in the middle of a _gunfight_?”

Bucky resisted the urge to shrug again. He liked to rile Howard Stark up because it was fun to watch him sputter around a room like a firecracker, but he didn’t want to give the guy a heart attack.

He also couldn’t tell Howard he’d given his coat to a time-traveling him from another dimension, so . . .

He’d been prepared to catch hell from Carter for the kiss the other Barnes had given her – and boy had he – but for some reason he hadn’t expected to get a verbal lashing from Howard about losing his coat.

“Twenty layers of finely interwoven silk,” Howard was muttering. “Bulletproof padding that will keep you warm since you’re still alive when they finish shooting you. The only thing that coat can’t save is your damn face!”

“I like my face,” Bucky protested.

Howard whirled on him. “I don’t! It looks very shootable!”

“Do you have enough silk to make him another one?” Steve asked, his voice even and calm and probably doing more to irk Howard than Bucky was.

Howard began muttering, obviously doing some calculations in his head. He finally waved them off. “I’ll have it before your next mission. I assume you want it blue?”

“I like the blue,” Bucky admitted with a nod.

Howard gave him a confused frown. “But why? Green or brown or hell, even white, would make you harder to see, you’d be able to conceal yourself better.”

Bucky grinned slowly, lowering his head predatorily.

Howard stilled, meeting Bucky’s eyes carefully.

“Your point?” Bucky purred. Steve shivered beside him. 

“I mean . . . that blue coat,” Howard said slowly. “They can see you coming from a mile away.”

Bucky took a long pull off his Lucky Strike, blowing the smoke up and away from Howard’s face. Then he smiled slowly. “I know.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Oh my god. How much did I love this Barnes......so much.......too much.....


	2. Opposite Day

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I should have noted this to start with but I kind of forgot. This is the follow-up to the Evil!Steve universe (Chapter 8), for anyone who skipped that chapter due to the warnings on it. There is absolutely nothing in this vignette to warn for, so it's safe to be read. But if you skipped the chapter, I didn't really explain much for background!
> 
> _tl:dr version of TINAC Chapter 8: Opposite World Steve and Bucky were frozen together and so woken by SHIELD together, Evil!Steve was super evil because the serum burned everything good out of him, blamed all his evil things on Bucky and got him locked up when they woke up, then he went on and killed a bunch of Shield and Hydra agents. He finally encountered our Winter Soldier!Bucky and got so dead because he didn't expect anyone to be able to best him in a fight. Opposite World Bucky (aka James) and GoodGuy!Rumlow were in love and became heroes for getting rid of Evil!Steve.....that's about it. This note is now almost as long as the vignette lol I'm sorry_

James answered the knock at the door with a heavy sigh. It was Sunday. He should not be having to get out of his pajamas on a Sunday. Or, for that matter, out of bed at all. He was a goddamn national hero and he couldn’t even sleep in with his boyfriend without interruptions.

Nick Fury stood at his door.

“Ugh, I thought you died,” James grunted, leaning against the doorframe and crossing his arms.

“Who is it?” Brock called from the kitchen.

James glanced over his shoulder, keeping one eye on Fury. “How many visitors do we get that we thought were dead?” he asked Brock with a slight smirk.

“An abnormal number, considering Romanov is still asleep on the couch,” Brock mumbled as he poked at their pancakes.

“You gonna invite me in, Barnes?” Fury asked, infuriating calm and cordial.

“I don’t know,” James shot back. “We haven’t prepared any holding cells in the basement yet, I’d hate to not return the favor.”

Fury clucked his tongue, actually wincing. “I guess we’ve got a lot to talk about.”

“People talk on doorsteps all the time,” James grunted, pointing at the welcome mat that decidedly did not say ‘Welcome’.

Fury nodded, accepting that James was not going to invite him in for Sunday brunch. He slowly reached under his leather coat, extracting a thin file.

“Absolutely not,” James blurted. “Fuck you.”

“Steve Rogers damn near wiped the world clean of every operative who could save it,” Fury said solemnly, handing James the file. “You three are all I’ve got left.”

James snatched the file away, turning to shout into the living room. “Romanov, you better check your ass for trackers!”

“What did you put in that wine?” Natasha asked, voice hoarse and muffled from the couch pillows.

“More wine,” James mumbled, hoping she wouldn’t hear him.

“What’s going on?” Brock demanded as he came up to James, a dish towel tossed over his shoulder.

James gave him a helplessly fond look even as he smelled pancakes burning.

“Aliens,” Fury grunted. “Or so I’m told.”

“Motherfu –”

“James,” Brock grunted, frowning and taking the file from him. “Come on, kid.”

James watched him wander away as he perused the file, then turned a mighty frown on Fury, who was doing a poor job of hiding his smirk. James pointed a metal finger in his face. “You’re eating every one of those burnt pancakes.”

Fury stepped into the house, sniffing the air. “You got any strawberries?”

James offered him one of the verbal variety as he slammed the door closed behind him.


	3. Drawn Together

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I could not come up with a 'comic' pun for the title holy hell I spent so much brain power on that shit.

“Hey, Buck?” Steve said as they settled in for a well-earned night of sleep.

Bucky was sitting up in his rack, arms propped on his knees, head bowed. Steve was concerned, to say the least. Bucky didn’t move, but he did hum in answer.

Steve hesitated. “Do you think we should have told them we could see the end of their story?”

Bucky looked up, his young eyes haunted and luminous in the light of the oil lamp.

“We could have told them how their story ended,” Steve said with a pained scowl. He’d been consumed by guilt ever since Bucky had lied to the visitors to their world and Steve had unquestioningly backed him up. Now, though . . .

“That man. The one with the metal arm,” Bucky said slowly.

Steve frowned, waiting for him to elaborate. When the kid didn’t speak again, Steve hummed. “What about him?”

“That was me,” Bucky stated, nodding as if he was certain of it. “Steve, I don’t want to know how my story ends. I don’t think anyone does.”

Steve’s stomach turned. He didn’t want to think of Bucky, of this amazingly brave boy who followed him into war, ending up with the tortured, angry eyes of the man with the metal arm. He sat up, reaching across the narrow gap to place a careful hand on Bucky’s shoulder. “It won’t end up that way. Not here.”

Bucky nodded, ducking his head. Steve could tell Bucky didn’t believe him.

“Howard said by the time we woke up, we’d have forgotten the whole thing,” he assured the kid, squeezing his shoulder harder. “So be a good lad and go to bed.”

Bucky grunted out a laugh and shoved Steve’s hand away, flopping onto his side in the narrow cot. “You’re a jerk.”

“Yeah,” Steve said fondly. “But by morning you won’t remember that. Get some sleep, Buck. We’ve got a war to fight.”


	4. A Real Headache

Sebastian stood with half his upper body covered in blue goo. He couldn’t sit. He wasn’t supposed to really move, once it started caking. He was cursing himself for all the work he’d done on the last movie that had meant the metal arms didn’t fit from year to year, because he didn’t sit still very well, okay.

The door to the trailer opened, and the sunlight pierced through Sebastian’s tired eyes. He groaned plaintively.

Chris laughed at him and closed the door. “You doing okay?”

“I hate you,” Sebastian muttered.

“Not really, though,” Chris said with a soft smile. Sebastian sort of wanted to hit him, but also not really. Chris went from giving him that private smile of his to looking at the mold on his arm with a frown.

“It’s weird, right?” Sebastian asked, his voice losing the teasing note. “Knowing they’re real.”

Chris nodded, ducking his head. “Have you read your script?”

Sebastian looked at him carefully, tilting his head. “I was only given my bits. Marvel doesn’t trust me.”

Chris nodded, not looking up.

Sebastian’s stomach dropped. “What? What happens to them?”

Chris swallowed hard and looked up again, meeting Sebastian’s eyes defiantly. “Nothing,” he said, his voice almost going into his stern Captain America tone.

Sebastian squinted dubiously at him.

“Our characters never travel through dimensions meeting other versions of themselves. So, what happens next . . . it’s just a story, right?”

Sebastian blinked at him, nodding along with Chris’s certainty. “Yeah. It’s just a story.”

Chris lurched forward and pulled Sebastian into a kiss, grabbing him hard like he didn’t want to let him go. When he finally did, Sebastian blinked away the fuzzy warmth and shock that always came with Chris’s newly open affections, then glanced down at his arm.

Chris’s stupid handprint was etched into the almost dry goop. “Dammit, Chris!” Sebastian cried as Chris giggled and scuttled out of the trailer.


	5. The Inevitable Sequel Tease

Tony stood with Steve and Sam and took in the carnage, breathless and dizzy with it.

Barnes’s body was still warm.

He looked to Steve carefully, not sure how the man would handle this. Anger and betrayal had been sizzling in Steve’s blood for months, but . . . Tony had been certain Steve would wind up forgiving Barnes, forgiving all of them, in the name of saving the goddamn world.

He’d been prepared to talk everything through, to ease the way. He’d _liked_ Barnes. Sort of. Now, though. Tony hadn’t prepared himself for Barnes already being dead.

Steve’s jaw tensed and jutted out.

“Steve,” Sam said carefully.

“Someone,” Steve said softly. “Find out what happened here.”

Tony glanced to his workshop. “Jarvis?”

“Welcome back, sir,” the AI said, sounding solemn and sad.

“I need to know everything!”

“I thought you might say that, sir,” JARVIS said. He projected a set of videos that began to tell a story.

And it was quite a fucking story.

The moment the shield battered against the back of Barnes’s head and he crumpled to the ground, JARVIS cut the video.

Steve was not handling it well. He was staring at Barnes’s body, unblinking. “Where did they go?”

JARVIS showed another video, an impossible thing where the five dimension-hopping attackers disappeared into a ball of blue light. Tony paused it and stared at the sphere of light. “Looks like tesseract light.”

Steve began to growl, his fists clenching so hard Tony could hear his leather gloves creaking. “Find me a way,” he snarled to Tony.

Tony nodded, swallowing hard. He’d never wanted to see a Steve Rogers who’d lost Bucky Barnes a second time.

Steve took a step toward Barnes’s body, sinking to his knees beside him. “Find me a way to kill them.”


	6. Ghost Story

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I guess I should move the timeline now, huh . . .

US Marshal Steve Rogers sat at a table in the dining room, Tony at his side, staring at a newspaper with the most beautiful headline he’d ever read. ‘War Hero’s Reputation Built On Backs of Brave Soldiers.’ A second article detailed the clearing of the names of several soldiers, including one James Barnes, and one Clint Barton.

Steve smiled softly, reading over Bucky’s name in print, beside the words ‘unsung heroes’. It had taken three years, but they’d done it.

“You think they’ll be here?” Tony asked, sipping from a dainty teacup of coffee that was way too weak.

“He said they’d be here. They’ll be here,” Steve said with certainty, folding the newspaper and tucking it to the side of the small table.

Sam entered through the hotel doors, glancing at the proprietor warily. They’d given Sam some problems when the three of them had checked in two weeks ago, but Steve and Tony had put up such a fuss that the proprietor had backed down. Jesus, you’d think no one around here had heard of Sam Wilson, or Bass Reeves.

Sam stomped up to the table and plunked down into the chair beside Steve. He grunted and smacked something onto the table. “Found this in the stables, sitting on your saddle.”

Steve stared at the feather, a grin spreading across his lips. There was a small piece of paper rolled around the shaft. He unfurled it and read Bucky’s beautiful scrawling print.

_Catch us if you can, Marshal._

“Ugh,” Tony said with a heavy sigh as he sat his teacup down with a clank. “Here we go, then. Damned ghosts.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> . . . I'll move the timeline.


End file.
